homelab overview#
"I've hired many engineers and would easily hire someone who has built and maintains their own home lab over any possible certifications." (executive hiring manager for large tech corporation)
Advantages:
- Solid, hands-on experience
- Includes hardware, networking, operations, and development skills
Stages to homelab development#
- Start with old machine and install Linux/UNIX to breath new life.
- Consider defunct, refurbished school lab computers.
- Consider single-board computers (SBC) for sensor-integration and AI.
- Take advantage of the “hype effect” and buy refurbished over new.
- When enough computers invest in a router and build home network.
- Save money and buy a refurbished server to host virtual machines.
- Save more money and buy multiple, small computers to build HW/HA cluster.
What about power?#
- Invest in a good power meter.
- Secret to managing power is having metered LED PDU (don't skimp on PDU).
How much do I have to spend?#
Virtualisation considerations#
- KVM is master of the universe
- QEMU emulates everything, not just Linux, but bloated a bit
- Firecracker replaced QEMU when small VMs wanted
- Firecracker is master of MicroVMs, but doesn't emulate everything
Last update:
2023-05-14